NXP Semiconductors has announced its involvement with the Radio Frequency Activation (RFA) product authentication platform introduced last year by Kestrel Wireless (see RF Activation Seeks to Turn Off Theft). The system is designed to prevent the theft of DVDs and other types of optical media by using an RFID tag to disable the media until the point of sale. NXP says it plans to work with Emeryville, Calif.-based Kestrel to apply the RFA model to protect other products from counterfeiting as well. These include such consumer electronics products as MP3 players, electric shavers, toothbrushes, flat-screen TVs, ink-jet cartridges and flash memory. The NXP chips used for the platform are compliant with the EPC Gen 2 standard but also include additional memory to support the data encryption and optical switch that are part of the RFA platform.